“I asked to see his room, sir.”
“For what reason?”
“To admire it, sir.”
“And what transpired there?”
Instead of answering, Zondi took an official envelope out of his jacket and emptied out of it two silver fruit knives marked with a crest. There was not a servant’s room in the land that could not reveal some sign of petty pilfering.
“You gave Zulu a receipt for them?”
“He did not want one.”
“But he took it?”
“Yes, Lieutenant. I told him to put it in a safe place while I considered making further inquiries.”
“How was he when you left him? Talkative?”
“Very quiet, sir.”
Pembrook, whose youth had made it impossible for him to disguise his astonishment at Zondi’s sudden command of formal Afrikaans, laughed out loud for the first time.
“It sounds very orthodox to me, sir!” he said.
“Naturally,” replied Kramer. “Now I think we’d all better get about our business. You to check the room and me to pay a call on the Jarvises. Zondi here has to tidy up his part in last night’s ax murder.”
They began to move towards the passage.
“Why are you taking that stick, sir?” asked Pembrook.
“To be honest, man, I don’t like dogs myself.”
“But there isn’t one at No. 10,” Zondi reassured him. “It’s dead.”
The last lesson before midmorning break induced the teeth-gritting feeling Lisbet usually associated with a piece of hard chalk squealing on the blackboard.
Finally she gave up trying to instill any enthusiasm for the onomatopoeia in early Afrikaans poetry, and told her class to read.
Immediately every hand shot up. She would kill the lot of them in another minute.
“What’s the matter now, Jan?” she asked.
“We haven’t been to the library this week,” he replied earnestly. “We’ve all finished our books.”
“Yes, miss,” chorused the others, suddenly anxious to receive the best education possible.
Little swine. Kids were quicker than anyone to smell out weakness.
“Have the magazines come?” asked Jan.
“That’s a good idea. They’re in my desk. Just a minute.”
Lisbet brought out the parcel, tore the paper off, and divided the pile into two.
“I’d like Dirk and Hester to hand them out, please. Be as quick and quiet as you can. Then you must all read until the bell.”
“Can I do the crossword puzzle instead, miss?”
“Yes, you may, Jan.”
Sometimes she suspected, rather nastily, that he took full advantage of that harelip of his, knowing that few had the courage to shut him up. You felt it might be likened to tripping a cripple.
Peace.
Lisbet began to do what she had wanted so badly all morning: to read through Boetie’s compositions in the hope of finding something there of significance. Her courses at teachers’ training college had included elementary psychology and she had learned something of the mechanism of projected thoughts.
“Miss?”
“Jan! Didn’t I tell you I wanted silence?”
“I want to show you something, miss.”
He looked very hurt. Realistically, too.
“What? It better be important! Tell me from there.”
Jan pointed in Hester’s direction without letting her see him do it. Lisbet took the hint but frowned.
“All right then, come up if you must.”
He tiptoed onto the platform and spread his copy of the magazine before her. His finger jabbed at a letter in the Detective Club section.
“See, miss? It’s signed by Boetie.”
Lisbet read the letter in a gulp.
“Jan,” she said softly, “I don’t think it’ll do Hester any harm to see this. But I think I’d better make a phone call. Can I leave you as monitor in charge?”
“If you like, miss.”
She shot from the room.
The constable handling the switchboard at police headquarters turned to his companion working on canteen accounts and said: “Hell, what are you buggers putting into old Kramer’s coffee these days?”
“He doesn’t drink our coffee. Why?”
“Then it must be that Greek over the road.”
“Doing what?”
“Putting something in his coffee.”
“Christ, I’m taking these things into the other office if you’re going to go on like that all bloody morning!”
“ Ach, don’t be like that, hey? It was just a joke. I mean a bloke like that isn’t my idea of a ladykiller-he needs a little extra.”
“Look, just tell me what this is all about.”
“That’s two dollies now, both different, both wanting to speak to him. Very sexy voices, I can tell you.”
“And so?”
“They keep ringing but I can’t put them through. He’s out and as usual I don’t know where. Feel like introducing myself-they sound hell of a anxious, if you know what I mean.”
One of the pinafored Bantu maids admitted Kramer to the hall and left to inform her master and missus of his arrival.
If she had been white, it would have convinced Kramer he was on a film set. Even the weather contributed to the uncanny feel of the place as rain hissed against the diamond-shaped bits of glass in the narrow windows on either side of the great wooden door. Not that he had seen more than two films about England in his life, but they had made a strong impression on him-largely because the strange girl who insisted on going to them was too ladylike to allow herself to be unbuttoned.
Kramer removed his raincoat and hung it up with some others on a thing made of antlers. Curious to know the name of the beast, he peered at the small silver plate beneath it and read: “Subalterns’ Mess, Fort George.” A lot of use that was.
He went back and wiped his feet on the mat again before stepping onto the rich pile of the Persian rug. The ceiling was very low. He tapped one of the brown beams and confirmed it was painted concrete, as befitted such conceits in the land of the termite. The original purpose of a long row of brass disks with pictures cut in them was quite beyond him.
But he understood the prime function of the rest of the decorations, while wondering idly if some were properly licensed. There were old pistols, swords, a crossbow, a daisy of daggers, and a battleax; an enormous gong, a vase as high as his waist stuffed with bull rushes, and paintings of horsemen in red blazers jumping over farm fences-in one the farmer was waving his stick at them.
Much as he looked, however, he could not find anything from Africa. All the smaller stuff was the sort of junk that Indians tried to sell you from cloth-covered baskets on Durban beach, although not as nice and shiny. With so many servants about you would think they-
The maid had returned with a maidenly giggle to announce that her master would see the boss now in the drawing room. Having carefully surveyed the large, thatched house on his way up the drive, Kramer had worked out its distribution of rooms well enough to open the correct door in the corridor.
Captain Peter Jarvis stood with his back to the gigantic fire-place, which had a one-bar electric fire poised for winter in its grate, at the far end of a gleaming floor. In spite of the distance separating them, Jarvis’s features-and
